BAFTA Nominations Are Out! Who Made Out Like a Bandit + Who Got Snubbed?

BAFTA Nominations Are Out! Who Made Out Like a Bandit + Who Got Snubbed?

Lincoln, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Skyfall, and Argo lead the pack of the BAFTA nominations! Who got snubbed?

-Lucia Peters

The People’s Choice Awards are tonight, the Golden Globes are on Sunday, and we’ve just gotten a new list of nominations for one of the season’s other big award shows: The British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards!

Lincoln leads the BAFTA pack with ten nominations, including Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Leading Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, and Best Supporting Actor for Tommy Lee Jones; Les Miserbles and Life of Pi each garnered nine, with Les Mis’s noms including (of course) Best Leading Actor for Hugh Jackman and Best Supporting Actress for Anne Hathaway; Skyfall came in at eight, with Javier Bardem and Dame Judi Dench both earning acting nods; and Argo nabbed seven, including Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor for Alan Arkin and Best Leading Actor and Director for Ben Affleck. Additionally, Anna Karenina grabbed six nominations (among them Outstanding British Film and Best Costume Design), and Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty earned five each—Best Film, Director, Original Screenplay, and Editing for both, and Best Actress (Jessica Chastain) for Zero Dark Thirty and Best Supporting Actor (Christoph Waltz) for Django.

A lot of these nominations aren’t surprises—it was kind of a given that Argo, Lincoln, and Zero Dark Thirty would be doing well this season—but it’s also nice to see a few films that ran a little more under the radar on the list. For example, playwright Martin McDonagh’s second feature film, Seven Psychopaths, got a nod for Outstanding British Film, as did The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel; it’s similarly refreshing to see the stop-motion flick ParaNorman in the company of Brave and Frankenweenie in the Best Animated Film category. I’m also glad that both Jennifer Lawence and Bradley Cooper ended up in the Leading Actress and Actor categories for Silver Linings Playbook.

I’ve got to say, though, I WAS surprised to see The Hobbit absent from the directing, writing, and acting catagories. This might just be me, but most of the quibbles that the critics had with the film are based around the quirks of how the original story works structurally—and I thought that Peter Jackson and company navigated their way skillfully around them. Martin Freeman was also magnificent as Bilbo, so it’s sad to see that his work isn’t getting recognized as much as it probably should. At least the film snagged nominations for Hair and Makeup, Sound, and Special Visual Effects—because let’s face it, they were AMAZING.